Any discussion of prior art throughout the specification should in no way be considered as an admission that such prior art is widely known or forms part of common general knowledge in the field.
An assisted service point of sale (POS) terminal is a POS terminal operated by a cashier. The POS terminal includes an optical code scanner for scanning and identifying optical codes attached to or printed on an item or document. In a typical purchase transaction, a customer brings one or more items for purchase to the POS terminal and the cashier presents each item to the POS terminal, which scans and identifies the item. During the transaction, the customer may be asked to present identification (ID) as proof of age or the customer may have a coupon associated with an item that lowers the cost of the item. A typical ID or coupon includes an optical code that can be read by the optical code scanner.
Some optical code scanners have a scan window on the customer side of the scanner where the customer can position the ID or coupon for scanning. However, the customer must communicate to the cashier that they have an ID or a coupon for scanning. The cashier then causes the scanner to physically configure itself to scan from the customer scan window and after the ID or coupon is scanned the cashier causes the scanner to physically reconfigure itself to scan from the cashier side of the scanner.